In today's video, we are talking about something that affects a lot of
people how to not stress about money.
Money can be a huge stress for a lot of us, but the good news is there
are strategies that we can use to help reduce or even get rid of that
stress around money.
In today's video, we are exploring some of those tips and strategies
in order to reduce that stress.
I know a lot of us have stress around money.
It's understandable.
There are debts that need to be paid off.
There is retirement to work toward all sorts of different things
around money, and they can feel overwhelming at times.
But let's talk about how to reduce that stress or that overwhelm
around money.
I'm going to share some tips and strategies that have worked for me
and that I have seen work with other people.
The first thing we want to do in order to not stress about money is
realize that money is a tool.
It is a resource.
That's all money is.
It's something that we can utilize to improve our lives, but we are
the ones that attach any emotion to money.
Money is not going to physically hurt us.
It's not something that we can hurt when we realize or acknowledge
that money is just a tool.
We do want to be respectful about money and realize that it can help
us.
So we don't want to have a negative attitude toward money.
We want to have a positive attitude toward money, but realize that
it's just a resource.
It can be that tool for helping us to achieve our financial goals.
It doesn't have to be a source of stress for us.
Once I realized that money is just a tool, it's a resource, it's not
something that controls us, we can control our money.
That really helped to reduce anxiety that I had around money.
The second thing we want to do in order to reduce our stress around
money is to take a look at our money.
We actually have to see how much money is coming in, how much money is
going out, what debts we have, what investments we have, how much we
have in our savings and our checking, all of those things.
I know there are different money personalities out there and one of
them is avoidant.
So we need to take that step of looking at our full financial picture,
seeing where we are currently, and that way we can set some goals and
map out a plan to progress to become better with our money, which is
drastically going to reduce our stress.
If we are constantly thinking about money and stressing about it, but
we aren't looking at our actual finances, then most likely we are
going to have more anxiety.
An easy way to do this is to set up a spending plan or a budget.
Start writing down what your income is and where you're spending your
money, all of your different expenses, and make a list of your debts
and how much you have left to pay them off.
And yes, it can sound overwhelming or scary, but honestly, once we
take that first step and just see where we are, then we can progress,
we can move forward.
We can reduce that stress around money even if we have more debt than
we thought we did, we now know exactly where we are with our financial
picture and we can set some goals.
But if we never do that, we are going to continue to stress about
money.
The way I like to set up my spending plan is by having a Google sheet
and also using a free app.
It's called Empower.
It used to be called Personal Capital, but it's an easy way to track
my finances.
I can hook all of my accounts to empower such as my checking, my
savings, my mortgage, my credit cards, my retirement accounts, all of
those things.
And once I hook all of those accounts to Empower, I can see everything
in one place.
I can see exactly where I spent money recently and in the past, I can
see exactly what my net worth is so that I can hopefully increase that
over time.
If that's something you're interested in, I will leave my referral
link below in the description.
You can click on that and set up a free Empower account and start
looking at your money today.
And this really doesn't have to be complicated or overwhelming.
You can just start with the basics, right?
What did you spend this past week?
Did you receive a paycheck?
Did you get money from a client?
Just start where you are.
Don't think you have to go over the past year and write down
everything that's going to feel very overwhelming.
But if you can just start today and maybe look a week or so, maybe a
month in the past, and then you can start to track where you are
spending your money, how much is coming in, and make improvements
along the way because what gets tracked gets measured and gets
improved.
And I do want to say when I had my nine to five job, I was using my
Google sheet or it was actually a spreadsheet that I was using, but I
would just keep track of my money in that spreadsheet and I was doing
fine because I knew exactly what I was spending my money on.
I knew how much was in my savings, how much was in my checking, and
honestly, I didn't know when payday was.
That wasn't what I was focused on.
I just knew that that money would be deposited in my account.
I had some auto payments set up.
I just had my full financial picture laid out.
I knew where my money was, so I wasn't so worried about payday when
money was going to be deposited.
And it was a really nice feeling to not be stressed about, oh, when is
payday coming?
It makes a really big difference on our financial life if we can keep
an eye on our money and especially in reducing that stress that we
have around money.
And then the third tip that I want to give you is to have a plan for
your money.
Wherever we are on our individual money paths, let's have a plan for
the money that we are receiving.
If we have debt to pay off, then let's make a plan to pay off that
debt.
If we don't have an emergency fund set up yet, then let's make a plan
to get that emergency fund.
If we haven't started investing yet, but we have our high interest
debt paid off and we have our emergency fund, then let's start
investing our money.
And if you do want help investing your money in the stock market, I
have a free masterclass about that.
I will leave a link to that below in the description.
You can click on the link and check out the free masterclass and get
started investing so you can actually retire one day.
Think about what financial goals you want to achieve and write them
down.
Make a plan for your money so that you can achieve those goals.
That is going to reduce a lot of stress around money because if we're
just thinking, oh, I don't know what to do with this money that came
in, or I don't know when I'm going to be able to pay off my debt so
that I can invest, if we actually sit down and make a plan, set some
financial goals on where we want to be and what we want to do with our
money, that is going to drastically reduce our stress around money.
This has been a really helpful factor for me setting financial goals.
I wouldn't have been able to purchase four properties if I didn't set
the financial goals to do that.
I never would've become financially free if I didn't set that as a
goal.
And if you are feeling overwhelmed with what steps to take to achieve
these goals, just think about, okay, if I want to become a
millionaire, for example, think what would a millionaire do?
What would they do in my situation, if we have some debt, they would
probably pay off that debt if it's high interest debt, right?
They would get that paid off so then they could start making their
money work for them and build up their net worth to millionaire
status.
And if we like to spend all of our money on clothing or going out to
eat a millionaire probably isn't going to do that.
So we can think, all right, what are some character traits that a
millionaire would do?
They would probably not spend so much on clothes.
They would maybe have a certain spending limit, a budget for clothing
every single month that they could spend so that they would still have
money to invest.
That's just kind of an easy way to look at things.
Just think, all right, someone that is ahead of me where I want to be,
what step would they take next?
And then you can take that step.
The fourth thing that helped me not be so stressed about money, and
this one is a pretty big one for a lot of people.
This was to have an emergency fund.
We know that emergencies are going to come up at any time and we want
to be ready for those emergencies.
We don't wanna be swiping that credit card, putting the emergency fund
on that credit card and then paying interest.
So it's even costing us more for that emergency.
Determine an amount that you want to have in your emergency fund and
work toward that.
I personally like keeping my emergency fund in a high interest savings
account.
I use Ally.
There are a lot of different banks out there that have a high interest
savings account.
So look for one of those, especially if your money is just going to be
sitting in your savings for a long period of time.
And if you're wondering how much you should keep in your savings, I
personally like keeping as little as possible in my savings for my
emergency fund.
I do have another video explaining this, so I will leave a link to
that above.
You can check it out later on.
The fifth thing that has helped me reduce stress around money is being
a conscious spender or just being more mindful about what I'm spending
my money on.
If we are spending our money more consciously on things that align
with our values and our priorities and our financial goals, we are
going to have a lot less stress around money.
If we are always just impulsively buying things and swiping that
credit card and racking up credit card debt, that is going to cause a
lot of stress for us.
So if we can just be more conscious when we are spending our money,
that is going to be very helpful.
We can just pause and take a second and think, all right, is this item
whatever I'm tempted to spend my money on, is this item going to help
me get closer to my financial goals or is it going to take me further
away, or is it something that is going to bring me lasting joy?
Or is it just kind of an instant gratification?
And I'll probably forget about it in a couple of weeks.
So next time you are thinking about spending money on Amazon or at a
clothing store or going out to eat, just pause and think, all right,
let's be conscious about this purchase.
Is this something that I really want that is going to bring me lasting
happiness or take me closer to my financial goals?
Or is it going to be the opposite and maybe I should not make that
purchase?
I know when I was purchasing one of my properties, I really tried to
focus in on being more of a conscious spender because I wanted to save
up for that down payment on my property.
So when I was thinking about spending money, I would honestly think,
uh, okay, if I don't buy this, I can put an extra amount toward my
down payment.
So I didn't buy a lot of things that I was tempted to buy during that
time.
And the sixth thing that I want to bring up, we kind of already
mentioned this, but we really want to be sure that we are paying down
our high interest debt, that we are saving some of our money, and that
we are investing our money.
That debt can definitely be a major source of stress.
We really want to get that taken care of.
We want to set up a plan in order to pay off that high interest debt.
And if you want more information about how to do that, I have another
video for you.
I will leave a link above.
And then we also want to set up that emergency fund.
We want to have some money in savings, or if we are saving up for
something in particular like a trip to Paris or to Italy or Israel,
then we want to set money aside and have money in order to take that
trip rather than swiping a credit card and paying interest and end up
paying a lot more for that trip.
And then of course, we want to be investing our money.
We want to make our money work for us so that we can eventually have
the option to stop working for the money.
And when we are focusing on these three different steps, we want to
automate as much as possible.
So if we already know which debt we want to pay down first, then we
can automate that debt payment and we can make sure that we are adding
extra to that debt payment each month automatically so that we don't
have to think about that each month.
And then if we are saving up for something like our emergency fund or
somewhere that we want to travel to, we can definitely set an auto
transfer from our checking directly to our savings so that we don't
have to think about doing that every single month and end up spending
all of the money in our checking account and realize that we didn't
transfer over any money to our savings account.
So try to automate that.
And then of course, with investing, we want to automate that as well.
And if you want help doing that, definitely check out my free
masterclass.
I will leave that link below in the description.
I know for me, I have done this with my investing.
I created that auto transfer and it makes it very, very simple.
I don't have to think about what I'm investing in.
It's already automated and I don't have to log into my account and
think, oh, is the price going to drop right after I buy it?
It's strictly automated.
I just dollar cost average.
It makes things very, very simple and it gets done.
And that is going to reduce our stress as well because we won't feel
so overwhelmed with everything that we need to do with our money.
We won't have to be logging into all of our accounts all of the time,
making sure that our bills are paid, making sure that we have money in
our savings, making sure that we are investing right.
If we can automate these things, it is going to take a lot of the
stress away.
And then the last item that I want to bring up is that you can get
support where you need it.
If you are struggling to follow through on financial goals or even
just struggling to set up financial goals or set up a budget or a
spending plan, you can definitely get support from someone.
You can have an accountability partner, you can have a financial
coach.
You can share your goals on social media and have a lot of people hold
you accountable.
I have done all three of those things.
I have a mastermind partner or an accountability partner that I talk
with every week.
I've also posted some goals online.
I've also worked with different coaches.
And one other way that I get support is also by praying.
So that can be another option.
Or it could be through meditation.
I know that's made a really big difference for me and definitely
reducing my stress around money.
So remember, you are not alone.
You can get support in different ways.
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Thanks so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.